Farrowing Hut Construction

Breeding our Berkshires on pasture was a bit harder than we expected at times. Some of our sows decided that they wanted to deliver in the middle of the day and in the heat of the Florida sun. This was not good and we ended up loosing 13 out or 15 babies in one litter. We searched the internet for plans on building our own farrowing huts, because most of the huts we found were to help out the sows up north, we were unable to find exact plans for what we wanted so we had to improvise. We did find a cool package of woodworking plans that can be used for a ton of different farm project though. Get some woodworking plansto help you with your projects. Ted shows you some pretty helpful techniques. I am one that tends to cut corners when I build stuff, my husband is very precise about everything he builds, so when we both follow exact plans, neither one of us win. Unfortunately we didn’t have exact plans for our new farrowing hut, so he did most of that.

If you are interested in building your own farrowing hut LSU’s AgCenter has some great patterns. You may have to alter them to fit your needs, like we did, but they are a great start.

Our Farrowing Hut Design

Our farrowing hut turned out pretty cool and we didn’t loose any more babies. It has an area in the back that only the babies can fit in so that they can get away from mom ( shown in the picture). This area has a lid that lifts up for easy access to the babies. So when it comes time to castrate the little boys,we can grab them out without any danger of our sow injuring any of the other babies, or us. Unfortunately, we didn’t make plans for this and we only made one so we won’t be able to offer a copy. But if you have any questions about the construction, you can contact us at any time.

The below pictures will give you a general idea of how we built our farrowing hut.

The cost was about $200.00, but the savings and lack of deaths made it well worth it.